A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #76
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For February 26-March 6, 2019, a roundup of the week's finest prose humor and prose humor-related news.
Hello and welcome to A Newsletter of Humorous Writing, the email propaganda arm of the acclaimed humorous readings show, An Evening of Humorous Readings. Oh good you're here, maybe you can settle this: is March the month that's "in like a lion and out like a lamb?" Or is it "in like a tadpole and out like a big ol' tadpole?" Or is it the month that's "in like Mean Streets but out like Goodfellas?" We can't for the life of us remember and we've been going back and forth since breakfast!
What We Enjoyed This Week
I'm A Clog Bitch Now by Lillian Stone (McSweeney's) Not only is this piece fantastic, but it also inspired us to look up what "paraffin" is. Gotta love comedy that teaches you something.
Did You Forget Your Password, You Stupid Bitch? by Jacob Crow (Points In Case) A tough and funny reminder that someday, everything unsavory you think about technology will be reciprocated when the computers have feelings too.
My Penis Is Stuck In A Colander, But Also I’m A Centrist. We Exist. by Megan Amram (Medium) Amram is the best, we all know that. This piece feels fresher than most Jokes About The State Of Things because it's satirizing a point of view and an attitude, as opposed to a specific event or person, which can age very rapidly. Got me thinking about political comedy and time which reminded me...
An Old Favorite
Gerald Ford's Joke Book by Anne Beatts (The Village Voice)
...of this piece I came across last month.
Out of all art, comedy's dependence on context seems to make it age worst of all. Political comedy has an even shorter half-life before it degrades into unfunniness. When's the last time someone you know really howled at "A Modest Proposal?"
This 1974 piece by Anne Beatts (for more on how great Beatts is, check out this Broadly interview from a few years ago) is an interesting example of aging political humor. The jokes she writes for Ford still work in that they are so badly told that they bizarrely contort back into something funny, which makes it a fun read 44 years later. But look at how much the Voice's archivist has to set up to orient this piece for a 2019 reader, who may not remember what tropes were used to make fun of Ford. What makes this evergreen is the fact that Beatts makes Ford into a hammy joke-teller, an archetype that most of us likely are still familiar with today, but might not immediately associate with the former president. To put it another way, you'd probably have no idea what to make of someone leaning over to you at a dinner party and whispering "geez, this guy's being a real Gerald Ford am I right?"
What I'm (James here) trying to say is that there are some really, very good jokes here by a legendary comedy writer that adhere to a recognizable voice, keeping this piece from drifting into the relative obscurity of most political humor.
Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show
Luke's sketch team A Few Sandwich Lovers has a sketch show called "You Can't Spell Love Without Cleveland, Ohio" coming up at the UCB Hell's Kitchen next Monday, March 11th at 6:00 PM. Check it out!
News About The Next Show
Thanks for coming out to our show last week -- we had a blast and we hope you did too!
Our next show is coming up on March 23rd at Caveat at 7:00 PM and it's a doozy! Not only is it our fifth-anniversary show but it's also part of the first-ever Satire and Humor Festival! We've got a great line-up of all-stars for you and yours:
- Karen Chee (The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Reductress, @karencheee)
- Chrissy Shackelford (UCB Maude and Characters Welcome, Problem Areas with Wyatt Cenac HBO)
- Riane Konc (The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Reductress, @theillustrious)
- Sarah Cooper (How to be Successful Without Hurting Men's Feelings, The Cooper Review)
- Kimberly Harrington (Amateur Hour, McSweeney's, The New Yorker)
- Jen Spyra (The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, The New Yorker, The Onion, @jenspyra)
- River Clegg (The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, The Onion, The New Yorker, Clickhole, @riverclegg)
- Colin Nissan (McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, The Best of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, @cnissan)
- Evan Waite (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, The President Show, Clickhole, The Onion, MAD Magazine, @theohbits)
The festival also has a lot of other great events -- panels, networking, workshops and more -- check out www.satireandhumor.com for more info and to buy tickets! See you there!
See you next week!
@brianagler, @lukevburns, & @jamesfolta
Did we miss a piece you loved? Did you love a piece we mentioned? Let us know! This is an experiment and we're hoping to continue to make it better and better. If you have any thoughts, notes, wishes, or dreams for this newsletter, please email us or respond to this email and tell us what the score is.
See you next week!
@lukevburns & @jamesfolta
We started this newsletter with our dear friend Brian Agler, and we want it to always honor his memory and his love of all things humorous. You can find our newsletter tribute to Brian here.
This newsletter is free, but if you enjoy it and want to support the work we do putting it together, you can subscribe to our paid tier, or you can send us a tip here. Any amount is greatly appreciated, and 1/3rd of each donation will go to Stand Up To Cancer.
If you'd like to place an ad in the Newsletter, please fill out this form.
If you have any thoughts, notes, wishes, or dreams for this newsletter, please email us or respond to this email and tell us what the score is!